Other Stuff

Patient Participation Group (PPG)

About our PPG

Our PPG is formed from self selecting interested patient volunteers. It meets 3 or 4 times a year, usually on a Thursday Afternoon, to discuss the progress and development of the practice. We wish our PPG to be truly representative of all different patient groups including different ages, different sexes, different states of health etc.

Our current PPG is composed of 10 members who attend when they can. Generally attendance is very good. Our members range in age and sex. Some have ongoing health problems and others have none. It is difficult to strike the right balance with a PPG. If it is too big is can be too unwieldy. Yet, if it is too small it can’t represent all points of view. We feel we have a well balanced PPG but, that said, we are always looking to recruit to the PPG, especially younger members. We do this by advertising here, on our web site, in our practice leaflet, by posters in reception and by word of mouth.

If you would like to join our PPG then please contact our Practice Manager (see the Contact Us page)

Knowsley Clinical Commissioning Group has a CCG wide patient participation group to which reps from our PPG are invited to attend giving a chance to influence the development of health care throughout Knowsley.

How we communicate with unrepresented groups

We are always keen to welcome new members to our PPG. We do understand that not everyone can attend. Some people can't get off work, can't come into the surgery or have too many other commitments to become involved. To help gather as broad an opinion as possible our patients can email our practice manager through this web site or talk to her in the practice. The doctors will often canvas your opinion during consultations. All of this intelligence and opinion is fed back to the PPG to help shape practice development. Also, we undertake an annual patient survey (see below) with which we endeavour to target as broad an opinion as possible to help with the development of the practice.

Survey - design, distribution and discussion

Each year, based on suggestions made to us by patients through the year and taking into consideration current developments in health care, we help our PPG to design a patient survey questionnaire, the subjects of the questions being set by the PPG members.

The survey is then randomly distributed to a broad selection of different patient profiles (age, sex, ethnic background etc) to try to gather a broadly representative view about how our patients would like to see our practice develop for their benefit.

Once completed, the PPG meets to discuss the results of the survey, make sense of the comments and suggest improvements which we undertake to do our best to implement.

Outcome of the 2013-14 Survey

In previous years the PPG has been instrumental in helping to develop our online prescription request, appointment booking and has guided us on changes to our automated appointment booking over the telephone system. We are pleased that have been able to implement every suggestion the PPG has made.

In 2013-14 the PPG, after being presented with the results of the survey, made one main recommendation.

Although there were several different areas that could have been looked into, once the PPG had talked over the results of the survey (published below) their overriding priority was to request a change in our telephone system to a cueing system. There was a level of frustration expressed about the current system which automatically terminates a patient's call if our receptionists are busy, causing the called to have to ring again. The PPG decided it would much prefer a system that told a patient where they were in a cue of calls giving them the option to hold on or hang up at their discretion.

Following this PPG meeting we have looked into adding such a system to our telephone system. It is possible although it will cost a not inconsiderable sum and may take a few months to organise. That said, we have committed to supporting the PPG and we have agreed to make sure that it happens.